Tuesday, June 19, 2018

To Hell with the Hillbilly, the kleine Leute, the Little People.

Ruth Lepson writes in a recent FB post:

Three recent books on Hitler reviewed in the NYRB--authors
believe that the only way to counter fascism is by individual acts--of course
we need millions of them. We have to keep speaking out & calling
congressional reps to express our opinions and helping in other ways like
giving to groups that help immigrants, etc.

Her reading of that excellent, must read, NYRB piece is more
optimistic than mine.

Mayer, "An American journalist of German descent" went
back to Germany to renew contact with ten Germans — self-described "kleine
Leute, little people." His most stunning conclusion is:

"is that with one partial exception (the teacher), none
of his subjects 'saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect.' Where most
of us understand Nazism as a form of tyranny, Mayer’s subjects 'did not know
before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that
it was evil. And they do not know it now.' Seven years after the war, they
looked back on the period from 1933 to 1939 as the best time of their lives."

This is stunning. Not even complete and utter military
defeat disabused these ordinary Germans of their fond view of the not so
distant past.

What does it take?

It's worth noting that in securing the confidence of his informants,
who he regarded, despite their views, as friends, and they him, Mayer held back
one explosve fact, namely that he was Jewish.

. . .

Ok, the Nazis lost. But here they are, in one form or
another, making a comeback, from Hungary through Poland
on into the United States.

If I ask, again, what does it take, it's because I don't
know, except that it takes a lot.

I do, I do think of Gramsci — I know, I know, we're not
to quote Marxist authorities, how tiresome and outdated, and I agree except he
was something special. He said, in even worse times than ours, "Optimism
of the will, pessimism of the intellect."

The most memorable portrayal
of Gramsci that I know of occurs not in any syllabus or summary of Marxism but
in Penelope Fitzgerald's deeply satisfying novel "Innocence", where
we encounter Gramsci in a Mussolini jail, dying of the tuberculosis that had
worked its way into his bones.